Background

Ethnicity: Henry Ford's father was born to a family which emigrated from Somerset, England, with ancestors who had come to Ireland in the early 1700s. Henry’s mother was born to Belgian parents.

Henry Ford was born on his father’s farm, on July 30, 1863, in Wayne County, near Dearborn, Michigan, the United States, to William and Mary Ford. His father was a farmer and wanted Henry to take over the family farm, but Henry had no interest in farming. He was much more interested in machines and building things. A talent for engineering and an astute business sense led him to become one of the great industrialists of his era.

He was the oldest of six children.

Education

Ford was bright and curious as a child. He was in his teens when his father gave him a pocket watch which he dismantled and reassembled by himself. He also practiced on the timepieces of friends and neighbors, and soon gained the reputation of a watch repairman. From a young age, he demonstrated mechanical ability and leadership qualities. Henry attended school until the age of 15, meanwhile developing a dislike of farm life and a fascination for machinery.

Career

At 16, Ford left home for the nearby city of Detroit, where he found apprentice work as a machinist. He then moved to the Detroit Drydock Company. During his apprenticeship, he received $2.50 a week, but room and board cost $3.50 so he labored nights repairing clocks and watches. He later worked for Westinghouse, locating and repairing road engines. His father offered him 40 acres of timberland, provided he give up machinery. Henry accepted the proposition, then built a first-class machinist's workshop on the property. His father was disappointed.

In 1888, he married Clara Bryant, who had grown up on a nearby farm. In the first several years of their marriage, Ford supported himself and his new wife by running a sawmill. In 1891, he returned with Clara to Detroit, where he was hired as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company.

Ford began to spend more and more time in Detroit working for the Edison Illuminating Company, which later became the Detroit Edison Company. By 1891 he had left the farm permanently. Four years later he became a chief engineer; he met Thomas A. Edison, who eventually became one of his closest friends. Ford devoted his spare time to building an automobile with an internal combustion engine. His first car, finished in 1896, followed the attempts, some successful, of many other innovators. His was a small car driven by a two-cylinder, four-cycle motor, and by far the lightest (500 pounds) of the early American vehicles. The car was mounted on bicycle wheels and had no reverse gear. In 1899 the Detroit Edison Company forced Ford to choose between automobiles and his job. He chose cars and that year formed the Detroit Automobile Company, which collapsed after he disagreed with his financial backers. His next venture was the unsuccessful Henry Ford Automobile Company. Ford did gain some status through the building of racing cars, which culminated in the "999," driven by the famous Barney Oldfield.

By this time Ford had conceived the idea of a low-priced car for the masses, but this notion flew in the face of popular thought, which considered cars as only for the rich. After the "999" victories Alex Y. Malcomson, a Detroit coal dealer, offered to aid Ford in a new company. The result was the Ford Motor Company, founded in 1903, its small, $28,000 capitalization supplied mostly by Malcomson. However, exchanges of stock were made to obtain a small plant, motors, and transmissions. Ford's stock was in return for his services. Much of the firm's success can be credited to his assistants - James S. Couzens, C. H. Wills, and John and Horace Dodge. By 1903 over 1,500 firms had attempted to enter the fledgling automobile industry, but only a few, such as Ransom Olds, had become firmly established.

Ford began production of a Model A, which imitated the Oldsmobile, and followed with other models, to the letter S. The public responded, and the company flourished. By 1907 profits exceeded $1,100,000, and the net worth of the company stood at $1,038,822. Ford also defeated the Selden patent, which had been granted on a "road engine" in 1895. Rather than challenge the patent's validity, manufacturers secured a license to produce engines. When Ford was denied such a license, he fought back; after 8 years of litigation, the courts decided the patent was valid but not infringed. The case gave the Ford Company valuable publicity, with Ford cast as the underdog, but by the time the issue was settled, the situations had been reversed.

In 1909 Ford made the momentous decision to manufacture only one type of car - the Model T, or the "Tin Lizzie." By now he firmly controlled the company, having bought out Malcomson. The Model T was durable, easy to operate, and economical; it sold for $850 and came in one color - black. Within 4 years Ford was producing over 40,000 cars per year. During this rapid expansion, he adhered to two principles: cutting costs by increasing efficiency and paying high wages to his employees. In production methods, he believed the work should be brought by a conveyor belt to the worker at the waist-high level. This assembly-line technique required 7 years to perfect. In 1914 he startled the industrial world by raising the minimum wage to $5 a day, almost double the company's average wage. In addition, the "Tin Lizzie" had dropped in price to $600; it later went down to $360.

Ford was now an internationally known figure, but his public activities were less successful than his industrial ones. In 1915 his peace ship, the Oskar II, sailed to Europe to seek an end to World War I. His suit against the Chicago Tribune for calling him an anarchist received unfortunate publicity. In 1918 his race for the U. S. Senate as a Democrat met a narrow defeat. Ford's saddest mistake was his approval of an anti-Semitic campaign waged by the Ford-owned newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. When the United States entered World War I, Ford's output of military equipment and his promise to rebate all profits on war production (he never did) silenced critics. By the end of the conflict his giant River Rouge plant, the world's largest industrial facility, was nearing completion. Ford gained total control of the company by buying the outstanding stock.

In the early 1920s, the company continued its rapid growth, at one point producing 60 percent of the total United States output. But clouds stirred on the horizon. Ford continued to rely on the Model T, even as public tastes shifted. By the middle of the decade, he had lost his dominant position to the General Motors Company. He finally saw his error and in 1927 stopped production of the Model T. However, since the new Model A was not produced for 18 months, there was a good deal of unemployment among Ford workers. The new car still did not permanently overtake the GM competition, Chevrolet; and Ford remained second.

Ford's last years were frustrating. He never accepted the changes brought about by the Depression and the 1930s New Deal. He fell under the spell of Harry Bennett, a notorious figure with underworld connections, who, as head of Ford's security department, influenced every phase of company operations and created friction between Ford and his son Edsel. For various reasons, Ford alone in his industry refused to cooperate with the National Recovery Administration. He engaged in some philanthropic activities, such as the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The original purpose of the Ford Foundation, established in 1936 and now one of the world's largest foundations, was to avoid estate taxes. A stroke in 1938 slowed Ford, but he did not trust Edsel and so continued to exercise control of his company. During World War II he at first made pacifist statements but did retool and contribute greatly to the war effort.

During the 1920s, under Edsel Ford’s nominal presidency, the company diversified by acquiring the Lincoln Motor Car Company, in 1922, and venturing into aviation. At Edsel’s death in 1943 Henry Ford resumed the presidency and, in spite of age and infirmity, held it until 1945, when he retired in favor of his grandson, Henry Ford II.

Achievements

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  Henry Ford not only founded the Ford Motor Company, but he also helped give birth to the automobile industry in the United States. Ford became renowned for his revolutionary vision: the manufacture of an inexpensive automobile made by skilled workers who earn steady wages. With his innovations in the manufacturing process and his commitment to his workers, he became a true American legend of the twentieth century. Although Ford died in 1947, his name continues to be stamped on every car and truck that rolls off a Ford assembly line today.
  
  Henry Ford had laid the foundation of the twentieth century. The assembly line became the century’s characteristic production mode, eventually applied to everything from phonographs to hamburgers. The vast quantities of war material turned out on those assembly lines were crucial to the Allied victory in World War II. High wage, low skilled factory jobs pioneered by Ford accelerated both immigration from overseas and the movement of Americans from the farms to the cities. The same jobs also accelerated the movement of the same people into an ever-expanding middle class. In a dramatic demonstration of the law of unintended consequences, the creation of huge numbers of low skilled workers gave rise in the 1930s to industrial unionism as a potent social and political force. The Model T spawned mass automobility, altering our living patterns, our leisure activities, our landscape, even our atmosphere.
  
  Ford has 161 unique patents to his name. He was fascinated by science and inventions, in particular. And he never stopped being a scientist; as an inventor, he believed he could have a significant impact on the world.
  
  In December 1999, Ford was among 18 included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th Century, from a poll conducted of the American people. The United States Postal Service honored Ford with a Prominent Americans series (1965-1978) 12¢ postage stamp. He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1946.

Religion

Ford was raised Episcopalian, and believed in God, but didn’t appear to have spent a great deal of time thinking about it. When he was 26 however, he discovered the concept of reincarnation, which made more sense to him than anything the Episcopalians were talking about. He didn’t completely ditch the Christian theology, but incorporated reincarnation into his faith.

Politics

Ford was a leading "welfare capitalist" who doubled wages in 1914 in an effort to reduce turnover and create a loyal, more productive workforce. But he only offered the five-dollar-a-day wage to workers who passed inspections into their private lives regarding, among other things, cleanliness of their homes, regular bank deposits, and their children’s school attendance records. Although he did not officially align with either political party, his prominence as a successful industrialist prompted Woodrow Wilson to convince him to run for Senate as a Democrat. He narrowly lost that race, and although he had copious support for a presidential bid in 1924, never ran for office again.

By the 1930s, thanks to the wide circulation of his antisemitic literature, Ford was much admired by the Nazis. In 1938, Nazi Germany bestowed on Ford the highest honor they could award a foreigner.11 It’s no surprise that Ford wasn’t very enthusiastic about entering World War II. He did eventually start producing planes to aid in the war effort, but his plants in Germany were supplying the other side while Ford profited at home. So in the end, not only profiting from war, but profiting from both sides of the war became Ford’s game. He chose not a political party nor even a country with which to be loyal; he chose only Ford Motor Company.

Views

Henry Ford was a man who believed and prioritized quality above everything else. He believed that his name should reflect quality; hence he put it on the company. He always focused on providing the best of services and products to his clients under any circumstances. His idea of creating a product was to make sure that the design and material utilized for the manufacturing of that product had to be of quality. According to him, if a car under the name of his company malfunctions, he was the one responsible for not providing the best quality to the customers.

Henry Ford was a man of great virtues. He strongly opposed the idea of smoking, drinking, and incompetent dads. In order to make sure he did not hire an individual bearing any such vices, he had formed a social department in his company. The department had set particular norms and these norms were in accordance with what Ford considered a respectable man in society. The social department had the final say, in the hiring of individuals and who should benefit from the profits earned by the company.

A well-recognized fact, Henry Ford had played a very strong role in being the pacifier during the First World War; he strongly opposed the idea of the war and heavily belittled those who funded it. He was perceived as the harbinger of harmony and also had partaken in the senate election which he lost with a small fraction of votes.

Among many, many other innovations Henry Ford brought to his manufacturing plants was a willingness to hire handicapped people, including the blind, deaf, and those who had lost limbs in combat or in accidents. By 1919, more than 20 percent of Ford Motor Company's workforce had some form of disability.

Quotations: "Religion, like everything else, is a thing that should be kept working. I see no use in spending a great deal of time learning about heaven and hell. In my opinion, a man makes his own heaven and hell and carries it around with him. Both of them are states of mind."

"You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do."

"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking."

"My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me."

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business."

"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him, better take a closer look at the American Indian.”

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it."

"Too many men are afraid of being fools."

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."

"Don’t fund fault, find a remedy."

"The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time."

"Some men may succeed because they are destined to, but most men succeed because they are determined to."

Never complain. Never explain."

"If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself."

"Whatever your goal in life, the beginning is knowledge and experience."

"You can do anything if you have enthusiasm."

Membership

Ford was a member of the Freemasons. According to the Freemasons themselves, Ford "was raised in Palestine Lodge No. 357, Detroit, in 1894."

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  Freemasonry , United States

  1894

Personality

Henry Ford cherished quality above everything else. A man of character and a lover of quality, Henry Ford became the brand he had envisioned he would be. It is a ubiquitous fact that Henry Ford possessed one of the most curious minds. Since his childhood and teen years, he had obtained the characteristic of being an inquisitive individual. He was known to tear apart and then put back his siblings’ playthings in order to understand how they functioned. He, later on, earned the reputation of a watch repairman due to his excellent success in dismantling and assembling timepieces of friends and neighbors. It is this curious mind of his that led to the invention of Model-T and Quadricycle.

Henry Ford had high respect for what he did but he made sure he did not do it all. One of the most praised qualities of Ford was that he had formed a team and provided them with a handsome salary. He knew that his envisioned company would only flourish if he would hire the best people for his company. He was known to ignore the past of an individual and focused on his willingness to work for the company.

Henry Ford was known as a great inventor, but he credited his success to the inspiration behind his innovative mind. He believed in a mysterious force or spirit of some kind which he claimed, guided him through the course of his life. According to Ford, this particular mysterious mastermind guides everybody toward their desires. He insisted that the mastermind sent brain message to everyone and what so ever Henry achieved so far was never by his own election but through the spirit forcing him forward.

Henry Ford was interested in reincarnation, materials science, and engineering, engineered woods, collection of artifacts, related to the history, geography, folklore and cultural heritage of the United States.

Interests

• violins

• Music & Bands

  Jasper Bisbee, Grisha Goluboff, fiddle music

Connections

In 1888, Ford married Clara Ala Bryant. The couple had a son, Edsel, in 1893.

Father:

William Ford

Ford could have followed in his father’s footsteps and become a farmer. But young Henry was fascinated by machines and was willing to take risks to pursue that fascination. Ford left his father’s farm in 1879 for Detroit.

Mother:

Mary Litogot Ford

When Henry was twelve, his mother passed away from complications during the delivery of her last child. Henry had difficulty dealing with his loss.

Spouse:

Clara Bryant Ford

In 1885, when she was 18, Clara Bryant met Henry Ford at a New Year's Eve dance, a short distance from the Ford family homestead. It’s said she liked Henry's serious-mindedness and his unique talents, and he liked her equally serious and appreciative demeanor.

Throughout their married life, Clara Bryant Ford remained loyal and supportive. As Henry's company and his fame grew over the years, Clara traveled with him to manufacturing facilities around the world.

Clara Ford outlived her husband by about three years. She died on September 29, 1950, at the age of 84.

Sister:

Margaret Ford

Sister:

Jane Ford

Brother:

William Ford, Jr.

Brother:

Robert Ford

Brother:

John Ford

Son:

Edsel Bryant Ford

Edsel Ford proved that one great man can flourish in the shadow of another great man. Joining his father’s company after graduating from high school, the younger Ford focused on administrative and business functions, leaving Henry Ford free to deal with design and production matters.

Friend:

Thomas Edison

When he was only 20 years old, Ford was promoted to Chief Engineer of the Thomas Edison Illumination Company's main electrical plant in Detroit, which provided electrical power for the city. He worked there for six years before Edison himself encouraged Ford to follow his dreams of creating an affordable, reliable, gasoline-powered automobile.

Friend:

Woodrow Wilson

References

• Henry Ford: A Life From Beginning to End
  2017
• Henry Ford
• Henry Ford: A Story of Entrepreneurship
  2017